IIHS: Subaru owners see value in driver attention system

Most owners of Subaru models equipped with the company’s DriverFocus system keep it switched on and believe it makes them safer drivers, a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows.

Nearly 9 out of 10 drivers who have the feature, which uses a camera to detect signs of distraction and drowsiness, told researchers they use it most or all of the time, and a majority said they would want the next vehicle they purchase to have it too.

“Such a high level of acceptance for a system designed to keep drivers’ attention on the road is a bit surprising and very encouraging,” said IIHS President David Harkey. “Distraction and drowsiness are factors in thousands of crash deaths every year.”

Attention support features like DriverFocus are designed to guard against those dangers. Many of them analyze steering patterns and lane deviations to determine when the driver’s awareness has slipped. Some, like Subaru’s, use a driver-facing camera to detect whether the driver’s eyes are open and directed at the road ahead.

Some manufacturers offer the simpler, pattern-based systems as standalone features, but camera-based systems are most often employed in conjunction with partial automation. The purpose is to minimize the risk that drivers will lose focus as they rely on adaptive cruise control and lane-centering features to keep their vehicle traveling down the road. A robust method of detecting when the driver’s attention has wandered is a requirement for a good rating in the Institute’s partial automation safeguards evaluation.

Attention is crash prevention

Subaru’s DriverFocus works independently from automated features. Since most driving is still done without any automation, such independent systems have the potential to prevent a large number of crashes that occur due to distraction and drowsiness. Together, those dangers were implicated in almost 4,000 U.S. road fatalities in 2023, and that number is almost certainly an undercount.

Driver attention systems can make a difference — if drivers embrace them.

The new IIHS study suggests automakers may find it relatively easy to convince drivers of the benefits. In an online survey of nearly 3,500 owners of Subaru models equipped with DriverFocus, 87% said they keep it turned on most or every time they drive. Seventy percent said that they would want to have the system again in their next car. Among those who drive with it turned on, 64% agreed that it makes them a safer driver and 63% agreed it helps them avoid distractions.

The small percentage of drivers who turned the system off under their profile settings complained that the alerts were annoying and too frequent, and most drivers reported that they sometimes received false alarms when they weren’t actually drowsy or distracted.

However, some of the other answers from drivers who reported false alarms suggest they had misconceptions about the behaviors that should trigger a distraction alert. For example, many reported receiving a false alarm when they were changing lanes. Most likely, this occurred because they looked sideways or over their shoulder without using the turn signal as they changed lanes, as the system is designed not to issue an alert when the turn signal is engaged. Others received warnings when they were looking away from the road to use their navigation system or adjust the radio or climate controls.

“We do a lot of things behind the wheel almost unconsciously, without thinking that they’re unsafe,” said IIHS Research Scientist Aimee Cox, the lead author of the study. “But those seemingly benign actions can pull our attention away from the road and increase the risk of crashing.”

Alerting without irritating

Separate IIHS research on lane departure warning systems — which issue alerts when the vehicle appears to be drifting out of the travel lane — suggests that shifting from audible warnings to haptic alerts like steering wheel vibrations makes drivers less likely to find them annoying.

For systems like DriverFocus, designers could reduce the potential for annoyance while maintaining the system’s effectiveness by converting to escalating alerts that start with a relatively unobtrusive haptic signal and add an audible warning after repeated signs of distraction or drowsiness or clear evidence of danger.

Not surprisingly, the study found that distraction alerts were far more common than drowsiness warnings. Previous research has shown that visible drowsiness is quite rare. However, the risk of crashing while visibly drowsy is also greater than the risk of crashing while engaging in some distracting secondary tasks.

Nearly all system users said they received at least one distraction warning over the 30 days prior to the survey, while about a third received a ‘take a break’ warning due to drowsiness. Many of those drivers said they were not drowsy at the time, but 12% reported receiving a warning when they were about to fall asleep.

“That shows drowsiness is certainly common enough to be a concern,” Cox said. “It’s also something that drivers may worry about more than the distracting activities they engage in more often, which could help encourage more people to adopt the technology.”

IIHS STUDY REVEALS SUBARU OWNERS OVERWHELMINGLY USE DRIVERFOCUS® DRIVER MONITORING SYSTEM, SAY IT MAKES THEM SAFER DRIVERS